VII THE VOLUME OF 1817 KEATS EATS begat Tennyson," says Mr. Saintsbury, "and Tennyson begat all the rest." The late poet-laureate would have objected to the first assertion. Arnold, Browning, Rossetti and Swinburne might well protest against the second. Let us modify the statement. Let us say that Keats created a distinguished original style and that he has had a strong influence on Victorian poetry. Originality is the repetition of a type with a difference. It lies sometimes in insight, sometimes in fresh emphasis. Falstaff is the fat comical braggart with the addition of an agile brain. Lincoln contributed original power to the idea of popular rule when he spoke of "a government of the people, by the people, for the people." The query about originality in the juvenile poems of Keats, then, concerns new vision and new energy of expression. In the volume of 1817 there are two poems of description, three epistles, seventeen sonnets, a scattering of short negligible pieces and a long poem of personal revelation. As a basis for comthe last poem is reserved for separate he had his typical things: landscapes of nature, literary friendships and the models of other poets. To these typical things what does he add that is significantly different? position discussion The consensus of critical opinion answers, "Very little!" The volume is interesting mainly as material for biography. There are some signs of promise: independence, enthusiasm, copious richness of detail. The defects are striking: incoherent ideas, perverse diction, forced awkward style. Except for one sonnet, there is no final excellence. Isolated-lines, however, give hints`of noble game still at large in the preserves of his imagination. They give us the scent for the trail. His mind is alert for fine subtle perceptions. Most of us are Peter Bells; the primrose is only a yellow primrose. Keats shows the true poetic instinct in the search for emotional values in the commonplace. Sometimes it is strained, inapt. He measures time, for instance, by the reading of two sonnets and the flight of a bee around a peach tree. But there is also some rare discern ment of undiscovered delight: the early sobbing of the morn; the sigh that silence heaves; the voice of crystal bubbles; the taper fingers of sweet peas; the wine of lustre like a falling star; the lily and the musk rose as emblems of youthful lovers; the pose of the lady as keenest in beauty when she stands with parted lips, listening. He records his dislike for murky London, beloved of Pope, Addison, Johnson, who still governed the public taste. He is in revolt. He belongs to the new age. He is infected with the "Return to Nature." He finds enchantment in the woods, with some old ruin near by and an intellectual comrade for company. But he is not world-weary. He is not touched by the spiritual malady of the Weltschmerz. He does not seek nature, like Byron, to weep out his woes on the breast of the great mother. Keats simply loves to lie on the grass, write verses and dream of fableland. Chaucer, watching his favorite daisy, was not more joyously at ease. It must be observed, too, that this youth has peered into the depths of Wordsworth. He has much of "Tintern Abbey" by heart. And though Jeffrey has pronounced upon the “Excursion," "This will never do," Keats believes it is one of the achievements of the times. Moreover, those whom he has chosen from the great dead for reverence, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, - they suggest the high tone of his aspirations. - Nevertheless his actual performance is not virile. His emotions seek no outlet in action. In fancy he cherishes those images of sensuous dalliance derived from the Spenserian tradition: the convoy of a barefoot girl across a brook; the caress of maidens with breasts of cream; the indulgence in lovers' trances of delight. The imagery, if sensuous, is chaste. The chaste Diana is his goddess; the extreme of voluptuous ecstasy is symbolized in "the sweets of the rose." Note this fact. The moon gives him the keenest emotion; the moon, "maker of poets . . the enthusiast's friend . . . above all other glories. Here at the outset we see why Keats' poetry is so attractive to women of fine grain. It appeals to the senses, yet it is devoid of all brutality. It may have abandon, but never the wild animal abandon of the decadents. There is a tempering coolness in his blood. At the thought of passionate Italian beauties he desires merely “to float with them about the summer waters." The scent of the trail is his relish for tidbits of fleeting pleasure. Even this requires a word of interpretation. In the hunt for pleasure there is an involuntary gravitation of his mind from the physical things of the senses to the imaginary. "He never beheld an oak tree without seeing the dryad," Hunt testifies. In the first poem, "I Stood Tip-toe upon a Little Hill," he revels in the scenery of Hampstead Heath, gathering pleasure from some seventeen flowers. The gravitation then draws him away to fable-land, where, through some fifteen classical memories, he rises to his rapture. It is in a mental world, not a physical, that Keats finds his natural home. The point is important. Matthew Arnold states that Keats was known to the public as the poet of Light feet, dark violet eyes and parted hair; Soft dimpled hands, white neck and creamy breast. How blindly the public must have read the printed page! These very lines were written to express by contrast a superior preference. He forgets such things, he declares, before he dines. Women have no power over him unless they can stir him to an exalted mood. The truth is that Keats' instinct for feminine beauty, though not possessing all the grave dignity, is otherwise similar to Milton's. It is a voluptuous pleasure of the senses; yet that sensuousness is an underpassion of the soul. |